The time to pull out the thermometer and stethoscope to check your horse’s temperature, pulse (heart rate), and respiration (TPR) for the first time is not when he’s looking a little puny and you and the veterinarian are on the phone trying to decide whether it’s an emergency. Instead, these baseline measurements should be part of a horse’s routine care. The reason: normal ranges of basic health parameters vary among horses, so you need to know what is normal for your horse to discern when it’s abnormal.

“With the economy the way it is, people don’t want the veterinarian to come out to the farm unless he or she has to come out,” says Jeremy Campfield, DVM, of Pacific Crest Equine in Exeter, Calif. “But it is difficult to interpret what the owner is seeing over the phone. Even though it is clear to you, ‘My horse is lying down; it hasn’t been eating,’ to me as a veterinarian that can mean a lot of different things.

“Having the TPR can help us determine whether we need to come out right now because this is an emergency, or whether we can schedule an appointment for tomorrow,” says Campfield.

Checking the TPR should be part of every owner’s basic assessment of their horse’s overall physical condition, no matter his state of health. Joe Bertone, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM, professor of equine medicine at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., notes. “You need to collect these data regularly when the horse is happy and healthy, and if you want to know what your horse’s ‘normal’ is, you need to have a record of routine temperatures and heart and respiratory rates